


Nebulae

by despommes



Series: Moonbringer [6]
Category: Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: 5.3 spoilers, F/M, Fluff, Fluff and Smut, Post-Patch 5.3: Reflections in Crystal, Romance, Smut, Vaginal Fingering, Vaginal Sex, because I said so, no more yearning or angst they get to be happy now
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-03
Updated: 2020-09-03
Packaged: 2021-03-06 14:54:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,226
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26270725
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/despommes/pseuds/despommes
Summary: "I would know you anywhere.”Spoilers for patch MSQ story line of patch 5.3.
Relationships: G'raha Tia | Crystal Exarch & Original Character(s), G'raha Tia | Crystal Exarch & Warrior of Light, G'raha Tia | Crystal Exarch/Original Character(s), G'raha Tia | Crystal Exarch/Warrior of Light
Series: Moonbringer [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1479872
Comments: 10
Kudos: 75
Collections: Final Fantasy XIV - Crystal Exarch x WoL Recommendations





	Nebulae

**Author's Note:**

> This revolves around my SMN Keeper of the Moon Miqo'te, Artemesia Andromeda. If you'd like to see a picture of her I have some [here](https://isaidyoulookshitty.tumblr.com/tagged/artemesia+andromeda). This is part of a series with my other stories, A Timeless Lullaby, Downpour, Cauchemar, Move Me. and Astrolabe.
> 
> Please leave me a comment and tell me what you think!

“If I recall correctly,” G’raha muses, and Artemesia rolls her eyes as he _always_ recalls correctly, “you promised to tutor me about the constellations of this shard.”

She smiles. “Did I, now?”

The constellations in question stretch out across the night sky as it blankets the shores of Lake Silvertear. From their rocky perch on a shallow bluff of crystal they lie with their faces upturned to the stars, illuminated in their milky light. It is a beautiful evening. The lake waters shimmer before them, the gentle wind rippling over the surface to oscillate the reflection of that evening’s crescent moon. Far behind them in the distance bustle the busy researchers of St. Coinach’s Find, their work winding down for the day in the face of oncoming night.

“You did.” He turns his head to look at her, lost for the moment in the misty depths of the past. “On this very shore. This very rock, even. You promised me the use of your mother’s astronomy book as well. Unless…” His mouth twists in jest. “You don’t remember?”

Artemesia rolls on her side, resting on her elbow. The dark tip of her tail thumps teasingly at his ankle. Their feet are bare and still damp from having been dangled in the lake. “Silly,” she says softly, fondly. There is no quelling the bone-deep rush of affection that sweeps her under. “Of course I remember.”

“There was quite a bit of drink involved. I was unsure if it might have impeded your memory.”

“Nonsense. I’ll always remember.”

G’raha reaches for her hand then, curled beside her head. He does not make to hold it. He simply traces the lines woven over her palm, led by touch or by sheer familiarity. She is unsure which. Likely both. “I wanted to kiss you so badly that night. I’d resolved myself not to, in an attempt to save us both any pain to come. Thankfully, as is often the case, you had the foresight to do away with my foolish inhibitions.”

“You are not foolish.”

“When it comes to you, I certainly possess the capacity for foolishness. In any case.” He brings her knuckles to his lips. A tiny kiss is paid to the joint of her ring finger. “It is one of my most treasured memories,” he murmurs there. “When things were at their darkest I held it very close. It… served as a reminder, to strive for a future in which I might see you again.”

That thought sits heavily between them, like the glimmering veil of corrupted aether across the lake, swathed as it is over the crystallized skeleton of Midgardsormr forever frozen with the Garlean dreadnought in its claws. It weighs upon her heart to be reminded of the lost years of his long, arduous vigil on another shard. It softens that same heart to have him here, now, with her.

“Forgive me,” he says quietly, as though sensing the timid melancholy growing in her. “It was not my intention to dwell upon the past. Not when there is such a capable future to consider.”

The way his eyes dance as they fall over her is almost enough to make her blush. She’s never been bashful; shy, perhaps, when she was small, withdrawn when she is unsure of herself. G’raha Tia, though, has an uncanny talent for inspiring a new form of _giddiness_ in her, a heady, bubbly sort of joy that warms her from the inside out. It makes her want to hide the beaming line of her mouth behind her fingers, tuck her face into her sleeve. 

It is unclear just which future he speaks of. There is the distant concept of it, decades and decades of her life to come. She would spend as much of it by his side as he would allow her, would selfishly grab to hold him close to her own at any chance she got. She has learned long ago not to live her life by counting on stars that may never settle into place, but when it comes to G’raha her heart has a mind all its own.

It is also possible he simply means their upcoming departure from Revenant’s Toll in the morning. A trip to visit her family in the Shroud. Her first letter home relaying the return of her dear friend had been answered with insistence from her father and cousins and grandmother that she bring him _immediately._ It has been years since his brief time among them, not since their days together in N.O.A.H., but that hardly seemed to matter. They all watched her come home to them with the moon in her eyes each time she left him in the First, and she aches to reintroduce them to the peculiar little historian as he is now. Her friend. Her hero. Her heart.

And so that is how they came to be here, on the lakeshore, their shoes strewn over the rocks beneath them and the warm wind rustling their hair. Artemesia lifts her hand to gently tuck back G’raha’s bangs from where they have slipped over his right eye. It grants her the magnificent sight of both ruby red irises, awash as they are in silvery night. His ears drop a bit at her touch.

“I imagine it is quite a shock even still to see it without the silver.” The slope of his nose wrinkles, the lingering self-deprecation ever present in his manner. She has not yet managed to kiss him free of it, but someday she might just accomplish that.

“I liked the silver,” she tells him. “Though I am also fond of the red. Is it still a shock to you?”

“... Yes. At times.” He chuckles. “There are mornings I look in the mirror and hardly recognize my face as my own. That is not even to mention the absence of the Tower’s claim on this body.”

The last two weeks had been somewhat of an adjustment period, she knows. He has had to account for the change in his balance without the crystal, the increase in appetite as his metabolism attempted to right itself between a years long slumber and a newfound talent for magic. Each day is easier, but there are still times he leans on her just a little more than usual. Artemesia welcomes it, always. “And for you?” he asks. “Is it strange?”

“No. I would know you anywhere.”

It is the truth. She smiles lovingly at him, swipes at the corner of his mouth with the pad of her thumb, but she cannot be certain she has ever meant anything more in her life. She would know him as surely as she would herself. She knows him by the sound of his gait, the spiced scent of his skin, the hallowed feel of his hand in hers. She knows the very shape of his _soul,_ beautiful and so much like her own.

The unabashed adoration in his eyes after she speaks feels like a gift. She can hear the halted inhale as it pauses in his chest, an emotional draw of breath that nearly brings her to tears.

Artemesia draws up from where she lies. She rests herself overtop him, sitting to straddle his knees, the skirt of her dress like a shroud about her calves. Her palms come to settle over his chest. G’raha watches her. “How would you like to kiss me again, G’raha Tia?” she asks him. He cocks his head, barely stifling a laugh. “Here, on this same rock, beneath these same stars?”

“Is this the price for your astronomy lesson?”

“It might be.”

He sits up. Pulls her closer, fully into the cradle of his lap. Artemesia drapes her arms around his shoulders, one hand lazily pulling at the end of his braid while the other seeks out the velvety tip of his left ear. He shivers in her embrace. “Then I dare say you may come and claim it.”

The russet silk of his hair falls over her forearm, whisper-fine against her sleeve. The shine of it in the moonlight is breathtaking. _He_ is breathtaking, here in her arms against all odds, the line of his mouth lax and waiting.

Artemesia kisses him.

She cannot bring herself to make him wait any longer. She tilts his head back and tenderly slants her lips over his. G’raha sighs sweetly into her mouth. His hands glide over her back, fingers spread wide over the angles of her shoulder blades to bring her closer.

He chases her as she pulls away, planting slow, dedicated kisses at the bow of her bottom lip, the point of her chin, the curve of her jaw. Artemesia lowers her head to nose her way over one of the tattoos emblazoned at the sides of his neck.

He gasps.

This was something new. She’d discovered it the morning after she had delivered him from the Tower. She had woken in his arms still foggy with sleep and her first thought had been to reach for a kiss. Her lips landed at the nearest part of him she could find: his throat. Before, she’d only ever found the unyielding touch of crystal there. Now it was nothing but delicate, vulnerable skin, warm and living beneath her own. G’raha had been dozing before she’d done it, but the second she touched him he had sputtered awake, biting down on an involuntary shudder.

The whole encounter had been sitting at the back of her mind all this time, like a treat she was saving for a rainy day. There is no rain, but the sound that catches between his teeth feels every bit like a treat.

_“Artemesia.”_

Her mouth curves against his pulse. “You’re sensitive here.”

“Yes,” he hisses.

“Have you always been?”

“... Yes.” His face glows, cheeks darkened with a blush. “It was harder to feel through the crystal, but yes.”

She sweeps the flat of her tongue over his fluttering heartbeat. It makes him groan. She has half a mind to do it again, but he drags her away to crush his lips against hers. The taste of him calls to something in the marrow of her bones. It floods her veins, hushed and hungry and humbling. He tangles his fingers through her hair, rests his thumbs over the rise of her cheekbones as he kisses her.

“Make love to me,” she whispers to him. He pauses, eyes searching for hers in the gloom.

“What, here? Now?”

“Yes.”

G’raha Tia laughs, a soft and happy sound that gives flight to the butterflies swarming in her stomach. He nuzzles at her collarbone. “I must admit…” The words are muffled into her skin, accompanied by an insistent pluck at the front of her dress. “This is not exactly what I had planned in terms of our first real night together, after everything.”

“Oh?” Her tone is light. Affectionate. “Too good for a tryst by the lake?”

“No.” The word is sincere.

“And what was it you had planned, I wonder?”

“Well.” G’raha peers up at her face. “To start with, a luxuriously comfortable bed. Perhaps a bottle of very good wine. Rose petals scattered in the sheets. Much of what I could not give you before—”

She steals the rest of his words by way of her teeth digging gently into the flickering angle of his ear and takes the heated silence that follows as her trophy. “Shall we wait, then?” she asks him, and it is a serious question.

“No,” he says again, this time through an earnest grin. He lays a kiss at the base of her throat. “I believe I am through with waiting for what is dearest to me.”

Artemesia cannot help but to agree. He has done his waiting, and for as long as she lives she’ll see to it he never has to wait for whatever his heart desires ever again. She herself had long since grown tired of this tentative distance between them. As much as she adores her fellow Scions of the Seventh Dawn, the close quarters of the Rising Stones have done little to encourage any form of intimacy. She is glad that the first semblance of privacy they have found in well over a fortnight will not pass them by unremarked.

The new clothing Tataru has so courteously tailored for him comes away far more easily than the Exarch’s robes ever did. She peels away at the layers, scarf and jacket and necklaces until all he is left with is the soft, linen undershirt and trousers. She traces idly at the symbols inked over his throat with a barely-there touch of her fingertip. G’raha’s breath catches somewhere over the curve of her shoulder.

“That is unnervingly distracting.”

Artemesia hums in understanding. She continues drawing her way over the Archons’ mark, the pressure of her finger featherlight as she outlines it in its entirety. He makes a tiny, fractured sound when she stops. The hands at her back fall to her hips, pulling her closer against the aching line of him. She feels him beneath her where she sits in his lap, already eager for the heat of her body. It makes her gasp.

_Light and spry, indeed._

Lost as she is in the curiosity over this newfound youth, it takes her by surprise when the front of her dress is tugged all the way down to allow her breasts to spill over the conquered neckline. Heat blossoms over her face.

It is an odd thought. They have seen each other bare in more ways than she can count, mapped the landscapes that make up each others’ bodies to memory, and yet still she blushes. Still the dizzy swing in her stomach sends her reeling. Somehow, this feels new. The hands upon her, both comprised of flesh and blood and bone rather than one of the same and one of living crystal, feel new. It _is_ new, she has to remind herself, and that reminder only inspires her to hold him tighter.

There is a timid, shaky breath that breaks between them. G’raha hesitates for a only an instant before he leans into her, planting his lips to whisper a kiss over her breastbone, just above where her fluttering heart beats away like it is running a race all its own. The sweltering trail of his lips travels down the split of her ribcage, down between her breasts until he reaches the stubborn fabric of her dress to leave a trail of goosebumps in his wake.

“Artemesia,” he murmurs to her, palms climbing high up her legs, twisting her smallclothes to the side. “My love.”

A questing thumb glides over the pearl between her thighs at the same time as he takes her nipple in his mouth, and the thready moan it tears from her rings out over the rocks along the shore. Her grip in his hair tightens. Her hips stutter in an attempt to chase his touch. The heat singing under her skin turns scorching when he slips two of his fingers inside of her body.

Even as she squirms, slowly driven mad by G’raha’s hands and his lips and his beautiful eyes, the world spins around them. The researchers of St. Coinach’s toil away in their camp at the other side of the twining crystal formations behind them. The people of Revenant’s Toll still bustle in the marketplace, even this late at night. The rest of the Scions have undoubtedly settled in for a quiet, or as quiet as they are capable of, evening at the Rising Stones. Artemesia is convinced the very world could open beneath their feet, Zodiark finally rising from his slumber, and she would still be adrift to this moment here, on a rock by the lake with a man that by all rights should have been lost to her long ago.

And yet, here he is. Here _they_ are, rolling about like teenagers and so utterly absorbed in each other it feels absurd. Together, after everything. It is everything she has ever been too scared to wish for, and nothing she could possibly deserve.

“Raha.” She calls his name with her face tilted towards the stars, ears bent close to her skull in pleasure. The whole of her tail thrashes as she squirms. “Raha, _please.”_

The sound of his given name shakes him. G’raha tears himself from the valley between her breasts to crush her against him, a palm resting in her hair to gently cushion her skull as he lays her back against the stone. Artemesia’s lungs forget their purpose for that tiny, thoughtless gesture. She has stared death in the face more times than she can count. She has slain gods, roared back in the face of a rage-sick wyrm, been run through by a beast’s blade, and taken an entire realm’s worth of light upon herself, and yet this man worries that she might knock her head against the rock a little too harshly. The tender irony is almost too much to endure.

Tears paint the beautiful night sky blurry. She blinks them away before she gives herself the chance to dwell on them for too long.

He reaches for the catch on his trousers at the same time she does. Too many hands trying to do too many things at once, and all they manage is to simply get in each other’s way. After a ludicrous amount of fumbling, G’raha slumps in defeat. He begins to laugh. Artemesia blinks up at him from where she lies, bewildered, and then soon the sound is echoed by that of her own voice. The two of them quake in their mirth, giggling stupidly as they finally manage to get the fastenings undone.

She is still laughing as he drapes himself over her, quiet, intermittent chuckles that ruffle the windswept hair at his nape. Laughs when G’raha carefully eases her smallclothes down her legs to throw them somewhere near their discarded shoes, thinking he could toss them into the lake for all she cared. She laughs even through the moan that tumbles past her lips when he finally, _finally_ slips inside of her. Her head does fall back against the stone this time, shoulders arching off the rock as the pleasure rolls through her blood like a high tide. G’raha shivers against her, muscles tensing as she writhes around him, holding himself still as a statue.

“Oh,” he breathes above her. His face is flushed a deep red, hair damp with sweat. Ruby eyes search for hers below heavy, hooded lids. “Oh, twelve preserve me, I can’t…”

“Raha, what is it?”

He trembles, shaking his head as though trying to clear it. “It feels so, so different without the Tower’s… without the crystal. _You_ feel different. I-I cannot describe it—”

“Should we stop?”

His answer arrives in the form of a thorough rock of his hips into her own. Artemesia gasps, clutches at the back of his shirt. “No,” he whines. The plush length of his tail twines around one of her calves, as though in an effort to keep her close. “No, please.”

His next thrust drops her jaw in a gape. The next after that sinks her teeth into her lip, and the one after that bends her back into a deep bow. Artemesia catches him about the ribs with her knees, hands scrabbling out of habit for crystal she knows is no longer there. She finds nothing but warm, spoken skin against her own, the untouched body of a man she never again has to share with the Tower.

G’raha lowers his face to hers, buries his nose into the moonlit halo of her hair. “I love you,” he tells her. His voice cracks as he says it. It brings tears to her eyes. “I love you. Oh, gods, I love you, I—”

A joyful sob bubbles up past her throat. She kisses him. Long-winded as ever, she would only ever silence him for the cherished weight of his lips upon hers. She swallows each word, determined to keep them for herself and carry them with her wherever she goes. No matter which realm, which shard, which lifetime, this will always be hers. Always be _theirs._

It is a fast, wicked end that hurtles toward them after weeks without the comfort of each other’s touch, he locked away in his Tower and she waiting forlornly at the other side of the door. Artemesia trembles as she slides her hand between their bellies, fingers slipping against his own at the apex of her thighs. She mouths the words back against his jaw, rolling her forehead against his as the constellations sear themselves into the glistening pools beneath her lashes.

She comes with his name at the tip of her tongue, lost to the shattered rhythm of his hips. She finds her bliss with a quiet sigh that is swept away by the wind rolling off the lake. G’raha hides his face in her throat, utters a broken sound as he is quick to follow. She feels him shiver, feels him come inside of her in a rush of familiar heat, the urgency steadily bleeding from his body with each passing heartbeat until there is nothing left to them but the radiant afterglow.

G’raha groans. Artemesia shoves her hands further up the back of his shirt. “My apologies. That was… far more short-lived than I was hoping for.”

She hums. “Brief, yes. But perfectly adequate.”

“A forgotten consequence of youth I had not been fully expecting, I suppose. Hells, we are practically still fully _clothed.”_

Artemesia laughs fondly. She nuzzles at the red lines of ink at his neck just to hear the air sizzle behind his teeth. “We have all the time in the world to grow old and decrepit. For now, I will enjoy every enthusiastic ilm of you, thank you very much.”

She can feel his blush burning against her even as he tries to smother it into her shoulder.

Later, as they are pulling on their scattered clothing, another stale summer breeze sweeps through them. Artemesia looks wistfully at the disheveled state of G’raha’s hair as it whips about his face. He shakes his bangs from his eyes as he tries to lace up his boots.

“Here.”

The pins holding back the bangs on the left side of his face are askew, likely at her own hands. She gently tilts his head, heart jumping at the way he blinks up at her. As she sets about straightening the clips, G’raha Tia rewards her with a dreamy, loveworn smile. She cannot help but return it.

“We should make our way back to the others,” he says, and loathe as she is to leave this tiny, hidden alcove they’ve claimed for themselves along the rocky lakeshore, she is inclined to agree. They have an early start for themselves in the morning. “Lest they begin to wonder where we’ve gone and come looking.”

“Oh, I don’t doubt some of them will know better than to come looking.”

She hasn’t the heart to point out that Y’shtola at the very least will certainly be able to smell him all over her. His expression tightens in encroaching mortification.

“There.” Artemesia fastens the last pin into place. “Perfect.” He grabs at her wrist before she has the chance to completely pull away, placing a momentary kiss over the thrum of her pulse. “I love you,” she says. The sentiment leaves her so naturally it hardly even registers. G’raha kisses her again, this time in the lines on her palm.

“I love you,” he tells her, again, this time as easy and soft as the surf upon the rocks. He makes to stand, hand outstretched to help her to her feet. She takes it without a second thought. “Now, let us be off before another swarm of enraged hippogryphs descends upon the good people of Revenant’s Toll.”

“And here I thought you yearned for adventure.”

His expression softens. “There is more than enough adventure to be found in the pleasure of your hand in mine.”

And with those words, G’raha Tia renders her utterly and thoroughly speechless.

As they begin the trek back to their fellow Scions in their place at the Rising Stones, Artemesia keeps their fingers linked together. She looks up to the sky. “Once we are home in the Lavender Beds, I shall have to acquaint you with my mother’s astronomy tomes and my astroscope.”

“... Yes.” The gentle brush of his thumb at her wrist accompanies the word. “Once we are home.”

“For now, though, I would hear just how much you remember of the lesson I gave you all those years ago.”

G’raha hangs his head guiltily, a good-natured smirk nearly hidden under the curtain of his hair. “Oh, dear,” he mutters. “I fear you keep far too much faith in me, my darling.”

“No.”

She brings his knuckles to her lips. Kisses devotedly at the back of his hand. The stars wink back at her from the scarlet glow of his eyes, just as captivated and enamored as she is sure her own must be. Her body leans fast into his, as though drawn in like a satellite in orbit, her shoulder pressed intimately against his. Exactly where she belongs.

“No, not too much, I think.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! Please leave me a comment and let me know what you think :)
> 
> Follow me on [tumblr](http://isaidyoulookshitty.tumblr.com) and [twitter](https://twitter.com/despommess).


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